


Pilots of the Storm

by JaqofSpades



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, Virtual Season 3, season 3 fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-02-23 14:40:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2551274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summer is over, the Nano is gathering its army, and the new threat makes the Patriots look positively friendly. With the continent plunging back into war, Charlie Matheson heads out on a new crusade, one with stakes so high that she is willing to sacrifice anyone who gets in her way.  (Including herself.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fill my dream

**Author's Note:**

> This is Season 3 fic, staying canon adjacent and attempting to pick up on all of the characters not long after we saw them least. It also picks up Charlie, Bass, Miles and Co after the events of my fic,[Something Brave from your Mouth.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1936134/chapters/4181694) But that's porn-with-plot and this will be more plot-with-occasional porn, shamelessly shaped around Kashmir, by Led Zeppelin.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream_

***

Charlie shifts in her sleep as his fingers drift over the intricate web of scars on her back. Their beauty still stops his breath, even though it was his own hands that shaped the design. He was a mere instrument, Bass knows, a workman tasked with unlocking all the things she already was. The pleasure, the pain – those were just his tools. Shortcuts to help her embrace everything she hid inside.

Also, kinky as fuck, he admits with a groan, and rolls his body flush into hers, hardness poking shamelessly at her hipbone. “Wake up, baby.”

Nothing but a puff of annoyance escapes her lips, and he has to face facts. They'd been fighting for three days straight, then spent the fourth in bed dumping all that stray adrenalin. His dumb cock was probably trying to cash cheques his body couldn't manage anyway, and the girl deserved her sleep.

Deserves everything.

And just like that he's wallowing again, staring at her, wondering what the fuck he's doing with a woman half his age, who's probably the daughter of the man he's been in love with half his life.

But did he ever love Miles like this? Stare for hours, dumbstruck, then hate himself for being so fucking needy? Bass flinches, because – yeah. He had. Every part of him protests now, reliving it, but at the time, he would have burned the world for Miles. He almost did. It's actual _history_ , they tell him, the story of Matheson and Monroe and how the fallout of their deranged relationship had scarred half a continent. He'd handed Miles his morals, and then his honour, and finally, his tenuous grip on sanity. He'd clawed them all back, no matter what Rachel had to say, but the cost had been too high. He and Miles were broken, and now, they couldn't even fight their way back to being friends.

That's what hurts the most. Maybe it's Charlie's presence that lets him mourn the friend, rather the lover, or maybe they'd been over long before he laid eyes on the girl. Letting go had never been something he was able to do, but that part of his life is as dead as the Monroe Republic.

He ignores the sneaky little voice that tells him their Republic could rise again. Being President had sucked, and he liked this version of General Monroe just fine. Charlie would come round, he tells himself. She won't let him shave the beard, and makes him strip off the jacket before she'll come into his tent, but she'll smile at him sometimes, now. Not the wide grin he gets when he's just plain Monroe again, but a cautious thing, with a curious twist to it. 

“General,” she'll say, and he can see love and lust warring with the shadows underneath. One day, they might win, he knows. Nothing he can do about that.

But he's gonna worship her, his Angel of Death, for every second of every minute he's got left. And hope to hell he's changed enough, learned enough, to do what has to be done. The whole fucking plan rests on him being able to let her go. Letting her become who they need her to be. And praying she comes home, after.

And is still Charlie. 

*

He's staring at her again.

Charlie shoots him a reproving glare, then directs her gaze down to the map to bring his attention back to the matter at hand. She wants to shake the man – spit it out already – but with all the disdain they already attract for not bothering to hide their relationship, occasional bursts of servility seemed wise.

Still.

“It's not fucking rocket science, Bass. Three divisions, or four? If you want to pincer them, fine, but anything more ambitious ...”

He cuts her off with a wave of his hand. “Four divisions. Northrop, Gardener, McCoy and Sattler. Char – Captain Matheson and I will take a team to liberate the prisoners from the camp in Belton, and the first and second will take Killeen and Temple. The third and fourth can come through behind us, then press on for Waco. Gut the khaki bastards, set up camp in Waco and use that for our staging point into Dallas. Questions?”

His tone promised slow, torturous death to anyone who dared, but Sattler, at least, had the balls to ask anyway.

“The intel says the Belton camp is heavily guarded, Sir. Wouldn't it be safer to take a whole division? We've got them on the run, but why risk yourself and Captain Matheson when we could roll right over the top of them?”

Sattler's backbone wilts a little under Monroe's cold stare, and Charlie suspects the man is desperately searching for some way to backpedal when the forbidding general suddenly vanishes, his face transformed by the flash of white teeth and winning dimples.

“'Cause we're bored, Colonel. Desperate for something to spice things up in the bedroom. Bit of cloak and dagger action here, bit of wanton destruction there – I know the way to a Matheson's heart.”

The men freeze, unsure quite how to respond to Monroe's open acknowledgement of her status as his lover. It's not until Charlie rolls her eyes – more dramatically than she normally would, but Jesus, take a hint – that they relax a fraction, chuckling obediently.

Monroe's eyes are icy behind the well-practised grin, telling her the casual joke is actually pure strategy, deployed to break the ice, perhaps. Or maybe to make it clear the gossip doesn't actually bother them ( _you lying liar_ ) and they'd rather talk battle plans.

“Will yourself and Captain Matheson be coming straight to Waco or will you be inspecting the clean-up of the other Patriot facilities first?” McCoy asks, then can't help but respond in kind. “You could make a dirty weekend of it!”

Charlie smiles through gritted teeth, but her hand is positively itching with the need to bury her dagger in his chest. As far as Monroe's officers are concerned, she's fucked her way into the rank, and that's the only reason he keeps her close. They don't give a damn how many Patriots she's killed, or just what she's endured to take her seat at the table. To stand next to him, for fuck's sake. There are soldiers in her command who drawl “Captain” the same way they might sneer “whore,” and the gossip has only gotten worse since she started sharing his tent. 

He'd argued against it, at first, and she should have listened. But sneaking away after sex had made her _feel_ like a whore, and the warmth of him next to her in the cot was the only way she got any sleep these days. The quiet intimacy that had built between them was unexpected, to say the least, but Charlie couldn't say she didn't love waking up tangled in him, morning breath hot against her face and last night's sex still slippery between her legs.

But the trouble with a tent was canvas walls, and the guards on duty outside all night. Mornings aren't so bad - he doesn't make her beg, in the mornings. It's all slow, hot satisfaction, and maybe they made people wait, maybe the odd moan made it's way as far as the guards, but those aren't the times that set the camp alight with gossip. 

Most nights, short of pitched battle or running for their lives, they turn in early. Take a bottle of whiskey to bed, and play. She's fiddled the rosters to make sure the guards outside are the most understanding she can find, but even they slip up sometimes. Charlie's cheeks are still burning from last week's gaffe.

They had practically tackled her to try and get the knife out of her hand. Poor Greene was red to the soles of his feet by the time he realised what was actually going on, Monroe fucking up into her as she held the knife to his throat, but nobody was talking about how Monroe was babbling with the need to come, begging her to use the blade, no. It was all “so that's why the General's whore carries a knife.” 

And just like that, she's nothing in the camp once more, all the battles she's fought and forays she's led pushed aside for something a little more gossip-worthy. If the uniforms and the ranks and the ridiculous protocol hadn't been killing her desire to throw in with the Texan army in the first place, this certainly did, Charlie fumes.

And if doesn't believe in the Army, then everything they're saying is true. There really _is_ just one reason she's here. And Charlie isn't sure she wants to be the type of woman who shapes her life around a man. Even a man like Bass Monroe.

She looks up to find blue eyes regarding her across the map, an apology simmering somewhere in their depths. They'd agreed pretending they didn't have a sex life was pointless, but she hadn't expected him to turn it into a joke, either. She'll make him grovel later, she decides. That's always fun.

But it turns out that's not what he's apologising for.

“I will be. Captain Matheson won't. She'll be putting together a team for a diplomatic mission to California, leaving within the week,” he tells the room, then dismisses them, striding outside with Colonel Northrop to leave Charlie gaping in his wake.

She was putting together a team? Who the fuck did he expect her to put on it? And what was in California, anyway? Suddenly, grovelling wasn't quite good enough. He'd dropped a bomb and just left, the dick.

Oh, she was going to make him _pay_.


	2. travellers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been_

They try his mother, but her features are too soft, too faded by time and childhood and the pain Connor spent too many years trying to repress. She fades in and out, a half-remembered cypher, and really, if they want to manipulate him? It's a shit show.

So they move on to his piss-poor excuse for a father. It throws him at first, he'll give them that, because even though he stepped back to let Neville take the shot,, he'd somehow bought into the Monroe mythology along the way. The bastard was hard to kill, and his belly gives an unwelcome lurch at the thought he might be dead.

Then his brain kicks in to remind him that they're fucking little mini-robots making a bid at mind control. They chose the people they thought could influence you, alive or dead, as long as they weren't in the room to chip-chip-chip away at their illusion. Little bastards didn't seem to like that, the way his Mom's features kept swimming in and out with his own uncertainty, so they'd just picked someone else. Didn't mean he was dead.

Not that that was a problem, Connor tells himself.

He'd just like to kill Monroe himself. It would make them … epic. Like Hamlet or something.

So yeah, he's not buying the sad eyes the little mind-control fuckers have dreamed up, and he's not letting them take him over, either.

He's got a better plan than that.

*

She fumes all the way through the prep for the attack, biting her tongue every time she wants to scream at him. Which is fucking often. There's some satisfaction in the fact that her clipped, overly professional answers are making him grind his teeth, and he's shooting wary glances her way.

Stew in your fucking juices, you meglomaniacal fuck, she finds herself thinking. If you haven't figured out you can't treat your girlfriend like any other soldier, then I'm sleeping somewhere else tonight.

(Charlie knows herself. He'd trail those knowing fingers over her belly, and she'd open for him like a flower. It's hard to stay mad at someone who insists on giving you multiple orgasms.)

Problem is, she doesn't have her own tent. She'd shared a long bivouac with several dozen other recently enlisted soldiers in her first days in the camp; they'd long since been been assorted into their platoons while she'd`been off scouring the countryside with Monroe. The thought of spending their nights apart had seemed unthinkable by the time they made it back, suborning her into his own service to keep her close professionally as well as peersonally. She didn't have any friends in the camp to speak of, and if she had, she wouldn't have wanted them to face Monroe's wrath anyway.

And she was too fucking proud to ask the quartermaster to find her a tent of her own.

Charlie is resigning herself to sleeping curled up under a tree somewhere when she feels a presence behind her, the faintest clearing of a throat telling her it's someone who knows her enough not to sneak up on her. Which is a pool of maybe three living people.

Four, she corrects with faint surprise as she turns to find Lacey Benson standing so rigid she may as well be at attention.

“It's not a rank, you know,” Charlie observes drily. “Nobody's gonna make you salute the General's whore.”

Benson winces and Charlie can't help but enjoy her moment of misery. She hadn't realised how much she needed a female friend until she'd discovered the otherwise frosty blonde had a razor wit that she only let loose after her second or third glass of whiskey. She was awful, Benson had moaned as they eviscerated half of the camp through the hazy filter of their whiskey glasses. Charlie had thrown an arm around her and assured the older woman she wasn't awful, just really really mean. “Almost mean enough to be a Matheson,” she had slurred, and Benson had laughed with delight.

It was heady, being liked for who she was. Charlie hadn't had that since Nora, everyone else in her life too worried about who she was becoming, or caught up on who she used to be. Lacey knew that she had fought with the Rebels, and then with Monroe, and had just shrugged and quoted something about the vicissitudes of war. Apparently trying to kill the General was easier to understand than wanting to fuck him, Charlie thought sourly, remembering the scorn on Benson's face when she confessed to sleeping with Monroe. She'd known the woman was professional down to her bootstraps – hell, she'd heard Monroe rave about her enough – but she'd expected her to have more imagination than to immediately jump to the same conclusions as everyone else. 

“I never called you a whore, Charlie. I never even thought it,” Benson says quietly. “I … look. I know I owe you an apology, but that's not why I'm here.” 

Blank, Charlie thinks. Don't you dare let her know how much you want to be able to forgive her. She raises one eyebrow instead, mini-Miles in every way, inviting Benson to talk her way into her own grave.

“I've heard you've been asked to pick a team for a mission. I want to be on it,” Benson snaps, her discomfort vanishing the minute she's back on professional ground.

Surprise knocks out Charlie's anger.

“Why? You're damn good at logistics, Captain, but you've not done anything like this.” She swallows for moment, wondering if Lacey has any idea who she really is. “It's a kill squad, Lace. You know that, right?” 

Benson meets her eyes, and slowly nods her head.

“Yeah, I figured. I also figured that General Monroe is too good a soldier to keep you close just for … you know. So he's planning something. With your squad. And I want in.”

Charlie blinks at the fact that Benson has figured out what's going on in Monroe's head while she's still putting the pieces together herself. It's annoyingly humbling, and Charlie's not good at humble.

“Assuming you can actually do what's necessary – and I'm really not - why the fuck should I have to put up with your sanctimonious ass?”

Benson snorts, unamused. “Because I'm better at this than you are. Figuring out how to proceed. Weighing the variables. Calculating the risk. I'm a strategist, Charlie, and I figure you need one. And I need out of here.”

Something about the sudden flatness in her tone makes Charlie wonder what the hell Benson is running from, but it's none of her business, right now. Her Matheson pride hates to admit it, but … she's right. They'd be a formidable team.

“Okay then. I'll ask Monroe to transfer you to our team for the Belton op, and if you can pull your weight, fine. Let's see how good you are at cutting throats, Captain,” Charlie sneers.

“One thing, though. If you think I'm fucking my way to the top, why the hell would you want to be on my team?”

“I never thought that, Charlie. I never said that. I was upset, I'll admit, but it didn't have anything to do with that.”

“So what did it have to do with? Whose business is it who the hell I want to fuck? And trust me, Benson, I do want to fuck him. This isn't some submitting to the General's will bullshit. If you think I'm that weak, get outta here right now.”

Two spots of bright color are burning high on the other woman's cheeks by the time she swallows her embarrassment enough to answer. “Look, I – I misjudged you both at first. I'm sorry. I'd spent so much time telling people the rumors were malicious and nasty, and then to find out – I felt stupid.”

Charlie nods tersely, knowing that part is her own fault.

“But you're wrong about one thing. I figured you two probably had something going on from back before all this happened but he's the General now, Charlie. What he does, other people think they can do too. And maybe they don't care what the female soldiers have to say about it.”

Charlie's head jerks up, sure she's misheard. But the truth is obvious in the white line of Benson's mouth, and as their eyes meet, Charlie's skin prickles with horror.

“They … they ...” words fail her as every bit of happiness she's stolen with Monroe suddenly stabs her in the gut.

“We're in an Army camp, Charlie. Thousands of horny men and a few hundred women, and no privacy or way to hide. And then you waltz in here, and Monroe skips you right through half a dozen ranks before you've even finished basic, and then you're in his tent, day and night. Nobody really cares what the real story is, Charlie. They just see the General taking what he wants, and figure if he can, why can't they.”

She wants to ask, but the words are stones in her mouth, choking her. Benson sees the question anyway, and grimaces.

“I'm okay. Not sleeping, and moving round a lot – lot of girls are getting jumped in their sleep, so we're trying to look out for each other. A few off the guys trying to keep a lookout, but most of 'em think you're asking for it, joining up in the first place.”

Charlie's horror crystallises into a ball of rage. But she's not the type to nurse it. 

“I'm sleeping with you tonight. Let's see someone try something. Let's see how they deal with it when we hit back.”

“You can't, Charlie. We're talking about men who sit at Monroe's table. Officers .”

“Trust me, Lace. When he finds out what's going on, he'll hold them down while I cut their fucking throats,” she snarls.

*

Nada, Miles thinks. Nada, nothing, not a fucking soul. Every evening, he rides the perimeter, a wide sweep five miles out from the walls of the town, his personal confirmation of the fact that there's no one lurking in the hills to the east, or along the treeline cloaking McAllister Creek, or digging in on the dustbowl to the south. No Patriots, no war clans, no random bandits.

Just … emptiness. Peace. Safety, he tells himself. 

He's losing his mind.

He wants to think he's just bored, but there's something darker lurking underneath it. Out there, life's still happening. Out there, no one's pretending the world ends at Willoughby's walls and that the biggest dilemma of the week is gossipy Mrs Peterson catching sight of Rachel's wedding photo, complete with the wrong fucking Matheson. He tries to care, but he can't. He laughs instead, and Rachel doesn't speak to him for a week.

She's all he wants, all he's ever wanted, but leaving him alone with his thoughts is dangerous. He's restless enough without thinking of them, Charlie and Bass, their absence throbbing like a missing limb. Somewhere, they're in the fight, perfect sync and silent communication, back to back and side by side. Matheson and Monroe mark two. 

His mouth twists at how much that stings, and he clamps his heels into poor Buck a little harder than he needs to. Dark pit, he reminds himself. Years trying to climb out of it. Rachel. You're with Rachel now.

(Jesus, one glance at the dressing, stark white against Charlie's smooth, golden shoulder, and he'd been instantly hard. Known exactly what it meant, unable to stop himself from picturing it, Bass teasing and tormenting her with touches just light enough to keep her on the frustrated side of orgasm, then using the brutal kiss of the knife too fling her over. Bass sheathing himself in her body, feeling her surrender in every shake and shudder, totally owned, totally his.)

He kicks the horse into a gallop and hurtles back towards Willoughby, begging the fates to send him a war clan, or a rogue battalion of Patriots to soak up this sin. All he ever wanted, all he _ever_ wanted, his poor, fevered brain insists, desperate to fight off the mad, bad beserker tearing at his chest and shrieking _mine, mine, mine_.

Maybe that's why he doesn't see it.

He'll wonder, later, who had helped her dig the pit, and installed the military-issue netting to disguise it in a perfect mockery of USMC SOP. He'll spend hours trying to figure out who she's working for, and what the payoff could possibly be.

But Miles never has to ask why. From the minute he's able to focus on her unsmiling face and the hatred simmering in achingly familiar eyes, he knows.

She hates him. She blames him. 

And so she should, no matter how much it stings to see so much loathing in that Botticelli angel face.

(He remembers teaching her to ride, this kid, squiring her back and forth across the yard while Nora laughed helplessly at the General playing groom. Remembers clapping as she blew out her candles, one teenage birthday after another, each time praying the surly little brat would like her gift. Remembers her sister's lifeblood spilling over his fingers, and carrying her down a hallway that never seemed to end, and Nora. Dying. Nora. Dead. Nora, finally killing him, and never knowing that, with her, he'd been able to play at being alive.)

“Mia,” he croaks, the agony of his broken leg making it sound like a plea.

It's not. He knows better than to ask for anything from this girl. Even a quick killing blow would be more mercy than she has left.


End file.
